Well, Shane & I are headed out on a three-week vacation, dogs in tow. Posting will be sporadic for the next few weeks, but we’ll be back to stay in mid-July. Until then, be patient - it might take us a little while to approve pending comments and reply to email.

In the meantime, some vintage Ralphie-on-the-road pics. (Vacation pics forthcoming!)
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 

One last article, and I’m off to bed:

Beer ingredient may fight prostate cancer

PORTLAND, Ore. - For many men, a finding by Oregon researchers sounds too good to be true: an ingredient in beer seems to help prevent prostate cancer, at least in lab experiments. The trouble is you’d theoretically have to drink about 17 beers a day for any potential benefit. And no one’s advising that.

Researchers at Oregon State University say that the compound xanthohumol, found in hops, inhibits a protein in the cells along the surface of the prostate gland. The protein acts like a switch that turns on a variety cancers, including prostate cancer.

Dr. Richard N. Atkins, CEO of the National Prostate Cancer Coalition, said the experiments are encouraging and “perhaps men could take it in pill form someday.”

Two recent news stories concerning the American Medical Association:

AMA wants warning labels on high-salt food

The American Medical Association voted Tuesday to urge the government to require high-salt foods to be labeled and also vowed to push the food industry to drastically cut the amount of salt in restaurant and processed foods. The goal would be 50 percent less salt within a decade.

Americans eat almost twice the amount of salt they should, and that contributes to high blood pressure and heart problems, the AMA says.

And:

AMA Wants to Tax Soda

A can of soda pop may cost you more if the American Medical Association gets its way. Doctors with the AMA have voted in favor of a resolution for a tax on sugary soft drinks.

They say pop is a large contributor to the nation’s obesity epidemic. The doctors want to use the money from the tax for public health programs that fight America’s unhealthy eating habits.

I’ve got to say, I think both actions are a step in the right direction. The warning labels for high-salt foods is easier to get behind, since it won’t “punish” the consumer for making poor dietary choices. Rather, it simply provides consumers with the information needed to make sound choices. Of course, it doesn’t guarantee that shoppers will pay much attention to the AMA’s cautionary note, but it does help in terms of education.

The soda (I call it “pop”, but whatever!) tax is bound to be more controversial, as it mandates economic disincentives in the form of a “sin tax.” Even so, I think it’s a great idea, as long as the tax remains minimal (because people should still be free to make their own choices - even bad ones). For starters, the funds generated will go to help fight obesity - a war that we’re quickly losing. Additionally, many lower-income individuals buy junk food because it’s cheap and available. A tax, then, will start to bridge the price gap between the junk food and the good stuff. As we’ve already seen, the prices of many foods are artificially low (as opposed to “organics” and health foods being ridiculously expensive). So a sin tax on the junky, inexpensive stuff will help to level the playing field.

Thoughts? (C’mon, Shane, I’m sure you have something to say as a tax-hating libertarian!)

An interesting study, conducted by Cancer Research UK, suggests that children “inherit” (at least in part) a taste for meat and fish from their parents. In contrast, a preference for fruit and veggies wasn’t linked to nature, but to nurture: the more a child’s parents encouraged herbivorous eating, the more kids expressed enthusiasm for nature’s candies.

From the BBC:

Children largely inherit their taste for high-protein food like meat and fish, research suggests.

However, Cancer Research UK found a liking for vegetables and puddings was less likely to be fixed, and more the result of the menu provided by parents. […]

Lead researcher Professor Jane Wardle, of Cancer Research UK’s health behaviour unit, said it was not clear why environmental factors were more influential in determining preferences for fruit, vegetables and puddings.

She said it might be down to the greater variety of choice available in these categories - unlike in meat or fish.

“It might be that children who witness their parents show enthusiasm or distaste for certain types of vegetables or puddings are likely to follow suit.

“Or it might be that if a particular food is always available children learn to like it.

“For instance if a fruit bowl is always full of bananas children might think of them as being a favourite food.”

Professor Wardle said the findings suggested that parents could have a profound impact on their children’s dietary preferences - and steering them towards healthy options could set a blueprint for life.

“Finding out more about why children like and dislike foods is important in helping us understand the problems of obesity.”

Additionally, the researchers examined gender differences in food preferences:

The Journal of Physiology and Behaviour study also found girls were more likely to enjoy vegetables than boys.

Might this have a little sumthin-sumthin to do with the stereotype that “real men” eat meat, while the womenfolk are expected to suffice on tiny sparrow’s portions of lettuce and broccoli?

(Crossposted at easyVegan.info.)

There’s a fun profile of - and interview with - “diet scold” Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating and Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health in Salon.com. Fans of Morgan Spurlock might recognize Nestle from Super Size Me: “She’s the only person in the movie who is able to offer a coherent definition of a calorie.”

Here are a few excerpts:

In “What to Eat,” Nestle demystifies the American foodscape, exposing the ways that nutritional advice is tainted by food marketers and the diet industry. Readers will find there’s much to be learned by taking a 611-page extended shopping trip with her. For starters, many foods with healthy reputations — most yogurt and fruit drinks and many cereals, even those promoted as high-fiber or high-protein — are loaded with sugars, and should be treated as dessert, not breakfast. Junk food is fortified and packaged to make it sound healthier than it is: As Nestle writes, “Vitamin-enriched sodas are still sodas. Organic gummi bears are still candy. Trans fat-free snack foods are still salty and full of rapidly absorbable carbohydrates.” And, sorry, raw cookie-dough eaters; today’s eggs are more likely to be contaminated with salmonella than they were just a few decades ago.

The Q & A on organics is the most interesting exchange, I think:

You’re enthusiastic about organic food. Why should people choose organic?

One reason absolutely overrides all others. There are no pesticides or chemical fertilizers used in the process, which means it’s much less harmful for the environment and for farmworkers. Certainly organic farms can be about as productive, and the food is at least as nutritious, and quite possibly more nutritious than conventional or industrially grown products.

There’s been a lot of controversy about the organic standard. What makes you trust it?

I talked to a lot of people who are in the organic business — farmers, producers, product developers, inspectors — and they all think it’s legit. Everybody involved with it seems to feel that it is a process with a lot of integrity. For one reason: they all watch each other. And really, the only thing that they have going for them is the credibility of the process, and if that process isn’t credible, it’s going to hurt everybody.

That said, there is tremendous pressure on organic farmers to cut corners, and those pressures come not only from the USDA, but also from Congress and the industrial food industry. To the extent that politics can weaken the organic standards, the industry does stand to lose the credibility that they’re now holding onto with their fingernails.

Do conventional food producers want us to think that the organic certification process is corrupt?

Of course they do. They want you to think that organic production is dirtier, because it uses natural fertilizer. They want you to think it’s not as productive. They want you to think that it’s less nutritious.

Go check out the whole thing here.

And a big BOO to McDonald’s:

Wendy’s plans to use healthier cooking oil

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Wendy’s International Inc. said Thursday it will begin frying french fries and breaded chicken items with non-hydrogenated oil, continuing a shift to offer healthier menu choices.

The country’s third-largest burger chain said the blend of corn and soy oil has zero grams of artery-clogging trans fat per serving and will cut trans fat in those menu items by 95 percent. Wendy’s will begin using the oil in its 6,300 restaurants in the U.S. and Canada in August. […]

Wendy’s has been working on the new oil for two years and testing it for a year at 370 restaurants in Florida, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Ontario.

McDonald’s Corp. pledged four years ago to switch to an oil that would cut in half the level of trans fats in the top-selling chain’s fries. However, Chief Executive Jim Skinner said in April that the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company was still testing the oil and did not know when they would make the change.

When will silly Ronald learn that it’s just bad business to kill your customers? Like, duh.

I haven’t done one of these in quite a while, but time to get back into the routine. I haven’t been posting as much lately, because I’m working on a diet plan, that I plan to publish in stages on the website. I believe Kelly and I have acquired enough good habits that are effective in losing weight, to warrant a plan. I can’t say that I could fill a book up, but at least a few posts.

I got the idea from my attempt to show off my diet plan by posting my meals on a daily basis. Well, that fizzled out as I got busy, but it inspired me to do more. Hence, the upcoming “Hellfood Guide to Diet and Weightloss”. However, for today, I am posting a quick review on Coca-Cola Classic, the poster child for popular soft drinks.

Coke considers a serving of cola to be 8 oz, which contains 97 calories. Coke sells cans in 12 oz sizes, not 8 oz. No one I know drinks two-thirds of a can of soda and then saves it for later. So in reality, the serving size that most people drink contains 146 calories. Cola doesn’t contain a single vitaman, contains 50 mg of sodium, and 40 grams of sugar. Every source I could find states that the reccommended daily intake of sugar is 40 grams per 2,000 calories. Wow. Your entire daily intake of sugar could be used up in one sickly, sweet can of coke.

Coke tries to suggest that their cola is a good way to hydrate, but who are they kidding? Just drink water!